The Teacher: Essays and Addresses on EducationPalmer, Alice Freeman
Philosophy
The Teacher: Essays and Addresses on Education
Palmer, Alice Freeman
Education; Education, Higher; Women -- Education
teachers would be rare, I seldom enter a school without finding
indications of the presence of at least one of them.
But for those who would acquire this larger influence a strange caution
is necessary: Examples do not work that are not real. We sometimes try
to "set an example," that is, to put on a type of character for the
benefit of a beholder; and are usually disappointed. Personal influence
is not an affair of acting, but of being. Those about us are strangely
affected by what we veritably are, only slightly by what we would have
them see. If we are indisposed to study, yet, knowing that industry is
good for our scholars, assume a bustling diligence, they are more likely
to feel the real portion of the affair, our laziness, than the activity
which was designed for their copying. Astonishingly shrewd are the young
at scenting humbug and being unaffected by its pretensions. There is
consequently no method to be learned for gaining personal influence.
Almost everything else requires plan and effort. This precious power
needs little attention. It will not come in one way better than another.
A fair measure of sympathetic tact is useful for starting it; but in the
long run persons rude and suave, talkative and silent, handsome and
ugly, stalwart and slight, possess it in about equal degree, the very
characteristics which we should be disposed to count disadvantageous
often seeming to confirm its hold. Since it generally comes about that
our individual interests become in some measure those of our pupils too,
the only safe rule for personal influence is to go heartily about our
own affairs, with a friendly spirit, and let our usual nature have
whatever effect it may.
Still, there is one important mode of preparation: seeing that personal
influence springs from what we are, we can really be a good deal. In a
former paper, on The Ideal Teacher, I pointed this out and insisted that
to be of any use in the classroom we teachers must bring there an
already accumulated wealth. I will not repeat what I have said already,
for a little reflection will convince any one that when he lacks
personal influence he lacks much besides. A great example comes from a
great nature, and we who live in fellowship with dependent and
imitative youth should acquire natures large enough to serve both their
needs and our own. Let teachers be big, bounteous, and unconventional,
and they will have few backward pupils.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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